


you'll never get to hold it / it's always holding you

by gallantrejoinder



Series: Whouffaldi Oneshots [2]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Pining, Rain, Thunder and Lightning, autistic Twelve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-18
Updated: 2017-08-18
Packaged: 2018-12-16 23:22:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11839146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gallantrejoinder/pseuds/gallantrejoinder
Summary: The TARDIS is stranded in Clara's flat, and Twelve along with it, just as a thunderstorm is gripping London. The perfect recipe for disaster, since Clara absolutely hates letting anyone knowing about her fear of thunder.Then again, the Doctor's not exactly a fan of storms either ...





	you'll never get to hold it / it's always holding you

**Author's Note:**

> Title from The Tiger Inside Will Eat the Child, a very Doctor-y song by Kate Miller-Heidke.

_Oh, come on_.

Clara doesn’t need this right now. A thunderstorm is the absolute last thing she needs right now. She tries not to jump as another crack of lightning illuminates the room, the boom of thunder rolling out several seconds after it above her head. She can’t help twitching a little, though, and she wraps her arms around herself, clinging with clammy fingers. Suddenly she misses Danny something fierce.

The ache in her chest is something she’s grown used to, though. Five minutes a day. Just like she promised.

The fluffiest blanket she owns, hot chocolate, and a stack of essays to mark. That’s what she needs to not think about the noise, and quick smart too.

Only just as she’s about to get on the business of making all of those things happen, she hears a distinct and familiar _vworp_ from the vicinity of her bedroom and has to fight the urge to groan aloud. Because of course he would be here. Of course.

His timing’s _always_ like that.

The TARDIS door creaks open in her bedroom, and Clara resigns herself to hiding her shakiness to the best of her ability and hopefully convincing the Doctor to take her far, far away from London and the growling, furious thunderstorm that’s settled over it. She opens the door to her room to see him standing nervously just outside of the TARDIS, doing something strange with his fingers as if he can’t stand still.

“You all right?” He greets her with.

“Yes. Good job, this time – I wasn’t even asleep,” Clara says, with somewhat forced cheer.

“But it’s five p.m.,” he frowns, looking confused. “It’s dark.”

“Okay, well, when I said I like to sleep whenever it’s dark, I was simplifying,” Clara admits. “I was kinda hoping you would just stop arriving late at night.”

“Ah.”

“Where are we off to today?” Clara asks briskly, as another clap of thunder sets the whole flat shaking. She clenches her fists at her sides to hide the shaking.

The Doctor winces, and Clara gets a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.

“Yeah, well … about that. This storm here,” he says, gesturing above their heads, “Is … not exactly the result of natural phenomena. Unless you count the expulsion of ten thousand psycho-reactive waves of spacecraft fuel as natural, of course, which some do. But the point is, the TARDIS can’t leave again until the storm passes, so we are, as of now, it would seem … stuck.”

“Stuck,” Clara repeats, somewhat faintly.

“… Yeah,” the Doctor replies, looking distinctly uncomfortable.

At that moment, another flash of lightning illuminates Clara’s room, and the Doctor winces, screwing his eyes shut. Before Clara has the chance to ask him what _that’s_ all about, though, the thunder hits, and she has to muffle a shriek as it cracks right above their heads, much closer than before.

With a hand clasped against her mouth, and eyes open wide, she watches as the Doctor opens his eyes, slowly, squinting before letting himself look at her fully. She lowers her hand, the truth dawning on her.

“You’re afraid of the lightning,” Clara says, fascinated despite herself.

“I am not!” The Doctor cries indignantly.

“Yes you are! Blimey, I can’t believe it. Big, bad, scary Time Lord afraid of lightning?” Clara can’t help but tease him, unwilling as he is to disclose his vulnerabilities with mere mortals.

“It’s not fear. I’m not afraid of it. It just – it _hurts_ ,” he grumbles, looking somewhat put out.

For a moment Clara only hears the rain as she processes his words.

“Is that like a Time Lord thing? Does the light, I dunno, cause some chain reaction in your optic nerves?”

He shakes his head, shifting from foot to foot. “Sort of. But it’s just – it’s only me. Not a Time Lord thing. The light is just – too much, all at once. It just … hurts.”

“Oh,” Clara says, softly.

Suddenly an accusing glare is levelled at her. “But you’re afraid of the thunder, aren’t you?”

“I am not,” she replies automatically, echoing his words from earlier. But he can see the truth in her eyes, as always.

“Yes you are,” he says, grinning. “Humans. Never afraid of anything it’d make sense to be afraid of, are you?”

Clara opens her mouth to reply with something both irritated and clever, but there’s another flash of light, and the thunder this time is only a moment behind, shaking the walls. Unthinkingly, she steps closer, seeking some kind of comfort, raising her hands to her ears.

She sees the surprise in his eyes at their closeness when he finally opens them again, and this time they don’t tease each other.

“All right, I’m afraid of thunder,” Clara admits in a whisper.

“And lightning hurts my eyes,” the Doctor replies softly, in a gesture of solidarity.

“What do we do? Should we get in the TARDIS?”

He shakes his head, leaning against its doors. “She locked me out. I may have, ah, had something to do with the storm, and she’s … not pleased about being grounded.”

“Almost as temperamental as you, that one,” Clara sighs, though she lets a smile through to show she’s not really angry.

The rain continues to pound down outside, showing no signs of letting up. There are goosebumps still rising on her skin, and she can feel the tension in the Doctor’s body from a mile off.

“All right,” she says, finally. “Okay. We’re going to have hot chocolate. And we’re going to pull out the fluffiest blanket I own. And then I’m going to mark these bloody essays. I don’t care what you do, but you’re welcome to join in, if you like.”

With that, she strides away and down the hall, into the kitchen, not looking to see if he follows. Once inside, she busies herself making the hot chocolate – with milk, the way her Gran used to, because this is a night which calls for comfort over frugality. She makes two mugs, and doesn’t think about why that is. That done, she places the mugs on the coffee table in front of the couch, and pulls a blanket from the linen cupboard. Settling herself on the couch, wrapped in the blanket, she feels cosy and pleased with herself – and only jumps a little when the next peal of thunder sets the surfaces of her hot chocolate into Jurassic Park-esque waves.

About halfway through marking the second essay, the floorboards of the hallway begin to creak, and she smiles.

The Doctor leans his head around the door hesitantly, as if he’s unsure about whether she really wants him there. She wants to explain, to tell him that that rule was for when she had Danny and any real reason to keep her life with him separate from her life here, but she doesn’t. That’s a conversation for when she can look at him without thinking about how different things might have been if he still felt the way he did before, when his age was hidden by a carefully carefree mask of youth. A conversation for _never_.

Instead, when he looks at her now, she just smiles encouragingly, and taps the space on the couch beside her, opening the blanket to let him in. He steps inside the room quietly, and curls up on the couch in near silence. It’s uncharacteristic, but she won’t comment on it if he doesn’t. There are plenty of things they’ve grown accustomed to not talking about.

Only once he’s settled beside her, legs crossed underneath the blanket and bony knee pressing against her thigh does she set the essays down, knowing she won’t be able to concentrate on them. She leans over to the table and offers him his hot chocolate. He accepts, clutching it in his thin hands, and she pretends not to notice the fact that his eyes are closed again.

They take periodic sips, and repress each shudder of fear and pain that runs through their bodies when the lightning and thunder hit. The evening grows darker, and still they say nothing, the tension both inside their strained muscles and in the air between them tightening with every tremble of the walls. The storm shows no sign of stopping.

“Doctor,” Clara says softly, unwilling to break the spell of silence between them, “Are you all right?”

“Better than ever,” he answers, tersely.

“Because you know if you weren’t, if you needed something – I’m not a fan of the storm either, I think we’ve established that much. You can ask. If you need something.”

He opens his eyes, only to narrow them once more in her direction. She stares right back at him, patiently, bravely as she can muster.

“I’m f–”

“Do _not_ say you are fine to _me_ , Doctor,” she interrupts, sternly.

He frowns, but says nothing more.

Clara sighs, and is just about to give up, when she suddenly feels him shift. She stills.

He moves in closer to her, where she half-sits, half-lies against the side of the couch, her feet crossed on the floor. Her right arm lies along the top of the back of the couch, and her left is under the blanket, gripping the edge with something in her bones she will not name.

He doesn’t look at her as he lays his head down against her stomach, keeping his hands curled in towards himself like he’s afraid to touch her any more than he already is. His legs won’t fit, and spill off the edge of the couch with what could almost be thoughtless abandon, if she couldn’t feel the tension in his shoulder, pressed against her hip.

She pulls the blanket over him, readjusting in silence. The lightning flashes once, but his eyes are already closed and one is pressed against her stomach, so of course, he does not flinch. But she does, unable to help herself when the thunder hits. And without warning, his hand comes up to her waist, a silent gesture of comfort.

She doesn’t know if it’s some Time Lord trickery, something to do with his oft-referenced but rarely used touch telepathy, but she swears, she can feel her heart slow from its frantic pounding at the touch. The rain falls, spattering against the window in the dark, and the heat of his hand is like a searing brand against her skin. The thunder feels laughably small against such a gesture.

They won’t talk about it, she knows. They don’t talk about so many things. They reference them, vaguely, at best. Or they look at each other sometimes and simply _understand_ , without having to use the words.

Sometimes, though, she wonders. If they ever miscommunicate. If they things that go unsaid should come out after all, if it would really ruin things the way she imagines they would. If breaking her promises would really be so bad, after all, when she’s the one who was left to live her human life alone.

The Doctor’s breathing has slowed, and it’s with some distant sense of surprise that Clara realises he’s fallen asleep. She’s falling too, inexorably, into strange and impossible dreams – the space between reality and the unthinkable.

Her left arm, under the blanket, rises to meet his grey curls. It’s the closest thing to intimacy she can bring herself to, slowly slipping into unconsciousness, hoping he won’t wake. Hoping he won’t ask. Knowing he won’t ask.

The rain falls, and falls, and so does she. Her last conscious thoughts before surrendering to her dreams are of wondering whether he ever felt a burden like this – promises to the dead, promises he cannot keep, pretending the memory of love will drown out the inexorable flooding of a love still living.

She knows he does, and that is the worst, and best part of all.

**Author's Note:**

> Back on my bullshit, validate me, etc.
> 
> [My Tumblr.](https://gallantrejoinder.tumblr.com/)


End file.
